Eleven eastern - caso mai

In the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, Italy held a strong appeal for Russian bourgeois, exiled dissidents and ailing intellectuals, who were attracted by the mildness of the Italian climate, by its historical sites and by its liberal political regime. 1 Italy’s artistic cities and summer resorts were, therefore, included in the itinerary of many Russians’ Grand Tours . 2 Among those Russians who sojourned in Italy for longer or shorter periods of time were many Jews born in Odessa, or its former residents, 3 such as Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940) 4 and Isaac Babel (1894–1940). 5 Several of these Jewish Odessites eventually settled in Italy, taking an active part in its political and literary life, as did Alexander Pekelis (1902–1946), 6 a professor of jurisprudence at the universities of Florence and Rome, and Leone Ginzburg (1909–1944), one of the most prominent anti-Fascist activists and heroes of the Italian Resistance. 7